Interesting Issue - Invalid Static Route

Im a refugee from winders and have been running linux for all of 2months now (and enjoying most every moment of it). Though, I have a biazzare issue with my NIC that what ever I have tried, it seems to persist.

The issue is this : If my network drivers are configured - on boot I get a system error claiming my pcmcia (spl) is missing and when I run a restart, I'll receieve an error "device not found , listening on 0 sockets"

If I remove my network card configuration, turn the box off, then back on, run a pcmica restart (from terminal ) - it does what it should, resets the pcmica and listens on 2 sockets (2 is correct).

The error is an "invalid static route" - which does not make sense, because I manually assign the static route and address @ configuration time and make sure it is not conflicting with another machine on the network.

this is all from root. After the last few eeeks of googling and searching here, I have not seen mention of this / what might be causing this.

any help or at least, if someone could kick my wheelchair down the right flight of stairs - It be much appreciated.

Im not adverse to RTFM 'ing either, infact, documentation would be wonderful. Thanks.